Reviews for Hidden Room Theatre Performances
Review: Rose Rage by Hidden Room Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on August 04, 2012
This Rose Rage was a fast-moving, thumping good time with lots of fight choreography, a full team of confident Austin Shakespearians and a couple of superb ringers brought in from the UK on an actor exchange program.
This is Shakespeare that you've never seen before, staged in an "original practices" style and at a court hall venue that the company couldn't possibly duplicate as a commercial production. You're in Austin, Texas, people, the through-the-looking-glass home of theatre practice, and this gem disappeared after a run of only three weeks It walked away with Austin's B. Iden Payne 2011-2012 theatre award for outstanding production of a drama, and director Beth Burns got the …
Review: You Wouldn't Know Him/Her, He/She Lives in Austin/Edinburgh by Hidden Room Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on August 11, 2011
Hidden Room and its partners haven't solved the problem of losing audiences to Netflix streaming, chatrooms and Facebook, but they've provided us with a fiction that seeks to deal with the new reality.
Austin's Hidden Room Theatre and its British partner Look Left Look Right ran this intercontinental production for the first time last March, linking Austin and London in a breathless Skype video dialogue between fictitious lovers Ryan Peterson and Elizabeth Watson. You Wouldn't Know Him/Her is an intriguing bauble, a digital spinning top and crystal ball that draws audiences into the fiction that they're assisting and supporting these young folk trying to overcome the challenges of long-distance romance. The …
Review: You Wouldn't Know Him/Her, He/She Lives in Austin/Edinburgh (March) by Hidden Room Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on March 11, 2011
The Austin-London production uses a boy-meets-girl story with not a lot of nuance. Actors working their respective audiences had the opportunity to create and maintain character, but it appeared they were spinning that cloth from a very short supply of thread.
Artists are intrigued by the possibilities of social media, a fascination that they share with commercial enterprises, institutions, marketing strategists and your old granny. (In 2010-2011 the share of the U.S. over-55's on Facebook quadrupled to 9.5%, because of a more than nine-foldincrease in their numbers, to just under 10 million creaky Facebook boomers.) It's no surprise that Austin with its happily volatile mixture of knowledge industries and creatives is exploring that fuzzy junction of …
Review: A Most Unsettling and Possibly Haunted Evening in the Parlour of the Brothers Grimm by Hidden Room Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on November 03, 2010
That impossibly long title might suggest more whimsy than one could stomach, but in fact the Evening in the Parlour of the Brothers Grimm was something of a Halloween valentine. Or more precisely, perhaps, a delicate, exciting dark chocolate delight, laced with spices and bitter almonds.
We had a lovely evening at the Hidden Room last weekend in the company of some of Austin's more whimsical and talented theatre artists. That impossibly long title might suggest more whimsy than one could stomach, but in fact the Evening in the Parlour of the Brothers Grimm was something of a Halloween valentine. Or more precisely, perhaps, a delicate, exciting dark chocolate delight, laced with spices and bitter almonds. Sweet enough to make you giddy …
Review: The Taming of the Shrew, original practices by Hidden Room Theatre
by Michael Meigs
Published on May 07, 2010
Ryan Crowder's Katherina is an intelligent woman, neglected and misprised by her father in favor of Hamilton's self-absorbed Bianca.She is tart, rather than sour, and gradually we see her beginning to appreciate Petrucio's attentions.
The excitement and cameraderie were palpable on the opening night of the Hidden Room Theatre's "original practices" staging of The Taming of the Shrew. This was a gathering of Austin's acting fellowship, in the audience as well as among the company. Director Beth Burns and assistant director Stephanie Delk greeted familiar faces; storyteller-actress Bernadette Nason served the refreshments; musician Jennifer Davis of the Baron's Men offered masks for sale at the concession stand. After the house …